About Less Wrong
Edit: This post refers to the original version of LessWrong, which ran between February 2009 and March 2018. The About page referring to the period from March 2018 to the present can be found here.
Over the last decades, new experiments have changed science’s picture of the way we think—the ways we succeed or fail to obtain the truth, or fulfill our goals. The heuristics and biases program, in cognitive psychology, has exposed dozens of major flaws in human reasoning. Social psychology shows how we succeed or fail in groups. Probability theory and decision theory have given us new mathematical foundations for understanding minds.
Less Wrong is devoted to refining the art of human rationality—the art of thinking. The new math and science deserves to be applied to our daily lives, and heard in our public voices.
Less Wrong consists of three areas: The main community blog, the Less Wrong wiki and the Less Wrong discussion area.
Less Wrong is a partially moderated community blog that allows general authors to contribute posts as well as comments. Users vote posts and comments up and down (with code based on Reddit’s open source). “Promoted” posts (appearing on the front page) are chosen by the editors on the basis of substantive new content, clear argument, good writing, popularity, and importance.
We suggest submitting links with a short description. Recommended books should have longer descriptions. Links will not be promoted unless they are truly excellent—the “promoted” posts are intended as a filtered stream for the casual/busy reader.
The Less Wrong discussion area is for topics not yet ready or not suitable for normal top level posts. To post a new discussion, select “Post to: Less Wrong Discussion” from the Create new article page. Comment on discussion posts as you would elsewhere on the site.
Votes on posts are worth ±10 points on the main site and ±1 point in the discussion area. Votes on comments are worth ±1 point. Users with sufficient karma can publish posts. You need 20+ points to post to the main area and 2+ points to post to the discussion area. You can only down vote up to four times your current karma (thus if you never comment, you cannot downvote). Comments voted to −3 or lower will be collapsed by default for most readers (if you log in, you can change this setting in your Preferences). Please keep this in mind before writing long, thoughtful, intelligent responses to trolls: most readers will never see your work, and your effort may be better spent elsewhere, in more visible threads. Similarly, if many of your comments are heavily downvoted, please take the hint and change your approach, or choose a different venue for your comments. (Failure to take the hint may lead to moderators deleting future comments.) Spam comments will be deleted immediately. Off-topic top-level posts may be removed.
We reserve the right for moderators to change contributed posts or comments to fix HTML problems or other misfeatures. Moderators may add or remove tags.
Less Wrong is brought to you by the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University. Neither FHI nor Oxford University necessarily endorses any specific views appearing anywhere on Less Wrong. Copyright is retained by each author, but we reserve the non-exclusive right to move, archive, or otherwise reprint posts and comments.
Sample posts:
To read through Less Wrong systematically, use the Sequences.
Less Wrong was established as a sister site to the blog Overcoming Bias, where Eliezer Yudkowsky originally began blogging under the chief editorship of Robin Hanson, and contains many old posts imported from OB.
To some extent, the software of LW is still under development. The code that runs this site is forked from the open source Reddit base, and is hosted on Github. Our public issue tracker is hosted at Google Code. Contributions of code or issues are welcome and volunteer Python developers are cordially solicited (see this post). More information on how to contribute is available at the LW Github wiki.
Less Wrong is hosted and maintained by Trike Apps.
- References & Resources for LessWrong by Oct 10, 2010, 2:54 PM; 167 points) (
- Yes, a blog. by Nov 19, 2010, 1:53 AM; 152 points) (
- Welcome to Less Wrong! by Apr 16, 2009, 9:06 AM; 58 points) (
- Apr 20, 2011, 10:05 PM; 54 points) 's comment on Official Less Wrong Redesign: Call for Suggestions by (
- A Suggested Reading Order for Less Wrong [2011] by Jul 8, 2011, 1:40 AM; 38 points) (
- Welcome to Less Wrong! (5th thread, March 2013) by Apr 1, 2013, 4:19 PM; 37 points) (
- Welcome to Less Wrong! (2012) by Dec 26, 2011, 10:57 PM; 31 points) (
- Welcome to Less Wrong! (July 2012) by Jul 18, 2012, 5:24 PM; 31 points) (
- Welcome to Less Wrong! (6th thread, July 2013) by Jul 26, 2013, 2:35 AM; 30 points) (
- My Strange Beliefs by Dec 30, 2007, 12:15 PM; 29 points) (
- New Discussion section on LessWrong! by Sep 28, 2010, 1:08 PM; 26 points) (
- Welcome to Less Wrong! (7th thread, December 2014) by Dec 15, 2014, 2:57 AM; 21 points) (
- Welcome to Less Wrong! (8th thread, July 2015) by Jul 22, 2015, 4:49 PM; 19 points) (
- Jan 22, 2010, 6:54 PM; 16 points) 's comment on My Wild and Reckless Youth by (
- The Trickle-Down Effect of Good Communities by Jan 8, 2011, 3:58 PM; 16 points) (
- Welcome to LessWrong (10th Thread, January 2017) (Thread A) by Jan 7, 2017, 5:43 AM; 15 points) (
- META: Which posts are appropriate for the articles section vs. the discussion section? by Jan 28, 2011, 8:27 PM; 14 points) (
- Welcome to LessWrong (January 2016) by Jan 13, 2016, 9:34 PM; 11 points) (
- Dec 17, 2009, 7:20 AM; 11 points) 's comment on December 2009 Meta Thread by (
- Mar 13, 2010, 7:36 PM; 9 points) 's comment on Open Thread: March 2010, part 2 by (
- Welcome to Less Wrong! (9th thread, May 2016) by May 17, 2016, 8:26 AM; 9 points) (
- Jun 1, 2011, 10:22 PM; 8 points) 's comment on Can’t downvote by (
- Sep 3, 2010, 11:38 PM; 6 points) 's comment on Anthropomorphic AI and Sandboxed Virtual Universes by (
- Mar 25, 2009, 11:39 PM; 6 points) 's comment on Spock’s Dirty Little Secret by (
- Mar 16, 2009, 4:09 PM; 3 points) 's comment on Taboo “rationality,” please. by (
- Jun 3, 2010, 8:51 PM; 3 points) 's comment on Hacking the CEV for Fun and Profit by (
- Apr 27, 2010, 3:38 PM; 3 points) 's comment on Attention Less Wrong: We need an FAQ by (
- 's comment on The Tragedy of the Anticommons by Mar 16, 2009, 11:21 AM; 3 points) (
- Jun 1, 2011, 11:22 PM; 3 points) 's comment on Using the Karma system to call for a show of hands—profitable? by (
- Jan 11, 2011, 5:33 PM; 3 points) 's comment on Back to the Basics of Rationality by (
- Mar 1, 2009, 4:32 PM; 3 points) 's comment on Issues, Bugs, and Requested Features by (
- Aug 7, 2010, 8:28 PM; 2 points) 's comment on Bloggingheads: Robert Wright and Eliezer Yudkowsky by (
- Welcome to Less Wrong! (11th thread, January 2017) (Thread B) by Jan 16, 2017, 10:25 PM; 2 points) (
- Feb 22, 2010, 3:06 PM; 2 points) 's comment on Study: Making decisions makes you tired by (
- Feb 23, 2010, 7:49 AM; 2 points) 's comment on Boo lights: groupthink edition by (
- Apr 5, 2011, 2:13 AM; 2 points) 's comment on The peril of ignoring emotions by (
- Oct 29, 2010, 3:03 PM; 2 points) 's comment on The spam must end by (
- May 22, 2010, 12:16 PM; 2 points) 's comment on Taking the awkwardness out of a Prenup—A Game Theoretic solution by (
- Sep 29, 2010, 11:46 PM; 2 points) 's comment on Lotteries: A Waste of Hope by (
- May 9, 2011, 8:50 PM; 1 point) 's comment on Karma needed to post? by (
- Apr 12, 2011, 8:09 AM; 1 point) 's comment on Do meetups really have to go on the front page? by (
- Jun 7, 2010, 4:21 PM; 1 point) 's comment on Welcome to Less Wrong! by (
- Mar 21, 2009, 9:14 PM; 1 point) 's comment on Precommitting to paying Omega. by (
- Apr 22, 2009, 6:15 PM; 1 point) 's comment on Issues, Bugs, and Requested Features by (
- Apr 29, 2009, 7:40 PM; 0 points) 's comment on Re-formalizing PD by (
- Apr 12, 2011, 3:48 AM; 0 points) 's comment on Do meetups really have to go on the front page? by (
- Feb 21, 2010, 10:16 PM; 0 points) 's comment on Karma Changes by (
- Oct 20, 2009, 7:41 PM; 0 points) 's comment on Lore Sjöberg’s Life-Hacking FAQK by (
- Dec 16, 2010, 2:41 PM; 0 points) 's comment on Username switch karma donation request by (
Maybe redirect the lesswrong.com/r/discussion/ link & description to the “Ask a Question” beta?
This is the old version, kept for the sake of not deleting old things. It is not meant to be an accurate description of modern LW.
Ah, makes sense.